


Not Quite Kansas

by radbackflips



Series: X marks the [1]
Category: DCU (Animated), Red Hood and the Outlaws, Teen Titans (Animated Series)
Genre: DCnU, Gen, Jason Todd is Red X, New 52, Sanity who needs sanity, dimension hopping shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-04
Updated: 2013-08-04
Packaged: 2017-12-22 09:50:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/911806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radbackflips/pseuds/radbackflips
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jason wakes up in a new, unfamiliar world. Who, exactly, is the Robin in Jump City?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Quite Kansas

**Author's Note:**

> Jason is Red X. This is reboot Jason, not original Jason, because spontaneous dimension-hopping makes more sense that way. Also, stability.

Fuck.

No.

What the hell was this.

"S'Aru, you little shit," Jason Todd got out through grit teeth, fingernails digging into his palms harshly enough to break the skin. The second the shock wore off he had given into anger, but it wouldn't be too long before he hit panic station and really started freaking out, "this isn't funny."

This wasn’t Rhode Island. This wasn't even a city that existed, because seriously - who the hell called a place Jump City? Where did Happy Harbour go? The rest of the map wasn't much better - Steel City he'd never heard of, where the hell was Metropolis, and he was pretty sure that was California, not Alabama. The entirety of America was mixed up, all the cities were either in the wrong place or had the wrong name, and he still had no clue where he was.

The possibility briefly entered his mind that maybe there'd been a mistake with the timelines - maybe he'd spent longer in the Hundred Acres of All than he thought he had - but the readout of the date on the giant plasma screen built into the side of a building ruthlessly quashed that delusion before it properly took form. It had been three years since he had died, and the date was a faithful three years later than he remembered it. The irony being, of course, that today was the anniversary of the day Jason died, too, but hey, S'Aru was nothing but an obnoxious shit. 

He'd been looking forward to today for a while now. It was the day he got to do back home; go running back to Gotham to find his dad/Batman/Bruce and they would get to be a family again - but no. No, this had to be ruined because S'Aru that little shit went and landed him in the wrong dimension. 

Okay. Okay, he could be cool about this. First thing he was ever taught by Batman, first thing that was ever reinforced by Ducra - stay calm. Even if it felt like your internal organs were going to blow from the pressure, calm the hell down. He could do this - one two three one two three - there, he didn't even need to meditate. Now what?

Collect information. The American roadmap he'd swiped out of the newsagent he'd been in wasn't going to help much, and it wasn't like he had cash that meant anything. Wasn't like they used greenbacks in the Hundred Acres of All. He needed cash over anything else. Good - he had a starting point. 

Jason pushed out his chair and stood up, glancing around the café he'd plopped himself down in. It was a small, quaint thing, not exactly packed but not doing too badly either, but he was getting the evil eye from the man behind the counter and he was probably going to get kicked out if he didn't buy anything. Though to be fair, he was probably violating some 'No shoes no shirt no service' policy pretty badly as well. No place in their right mind would hire him looking as he did – ripped and scarred and looking half-feral. He didn't have any history in this world, or credentials on him, and it wasn't really worth holding a stick-up. Pick-pocketing was probably the only way to go at the moment.

There. The man passing his table had just dropped a fancy wallet back into his pocket. These were good people, and he didn't want to do it, but Jason really did need the cash. They'd probably be lining up to help out if they knew he was Robin, anyhow. Assuming Robin existed in this universe, Jason thought grimly as he bumped past the man in the expensive suit.

"Kid, watch it!" The man snapped, and Jason muttered a quick and insincere apology, far too occupied with sneaking the wallet out of the man's pocket and into his own. Thank you, Bruce. Probably not what he'd meant to teach, but seriously, what was he expecting to happen.

Jason was out the door and mingling in with the rest of the crowd before the man realised what had happened. As soon as he was out of sight of the café he snapped open the wallet and flipped through the cash inside. Not as much as he thought there'd be, admittedly. Sixty in cash. The rest were cards. The cards were useless - he didn't want to leave a trail or incriminate himself in any way before he knew how the world worked. And sixty dollars wasn't going to last him long at all.

He'd literally just come to the conclusion that his best option was to pool his resources and just get a damn shirt when something exploded. 

Jason froze, senses going into overload as he looked for the source - there, the bank, there was a man coming out of the side of the Bank of Perez, a sack of cash slung over one shoulder and a ball of light in one hand. Jason took a quick moment to assess the situation - this guy's leading motif was light bulbs, so maybe some alternate version of Doctor Light, which suggested super-powered and highly destructive light-based attacks, but not a brilliant level of actual competence. Jason, on the other hand, literally only had the tattered pants he was wearing, the wallet he'd just stolen and his All-Blades. That was it. 

That was enough.

Jason raced forward, reaching for his All-Blades, just in time for -

"Titans! Go!"

A blast of green light brought him skidding to a halt and he watched, eyes narrowing, as an eerily familiar girl in purple came into view. She was followed by a green boy, what looked to be a cyborg, a woman in a dark blue cloak and -

Jason stopped. His brain stuttered, eyes blown wide as the fifth and apparently final member of this team dropped from the sky. Red and green, a domino mask, and the yellow R -

What the hell. This world had a Robin. And if the timelines were the same then -

Bruce had replaced him.

Jason's mind shut down, barely paying attention as the kids - Titans, was it - laid into Doctor Light, his hands curling into fists as he held back the urge to call out his All-Blades and lay into the new Robin. 

S'Aru, you little shit,  he found himself thinking for the second time that day, this isn't funny. 

 

It took him a while to snap out of it. By the time reality had come back to him and he'd stopped seeing red, Doctor Light was down at the Titans were crowded around him, tying him up to get handed back to the police. Or maybe the ambulance. Guy didn't look so good. 

Jason didn't consider himself a bad guy, but these were extenuating circumstances. His eyes locked on the bag of cash lying not ten feet away and he figured, hey, who's going to notice? 

If the bank owners ever realised that two grand was missing from the stolen cash, they didn't say anything about it. Not like Jason cared anymore. At least now he could get some shoes.

 

He'd be honest. The fact that Bruce had apparently replaced him in this world didn't sting as much as it should have. Maybe it hadn't happened in his world. This wasn't his Bruce, after all. Not his world. Not him that was replaced. Some other Jason Todd. There was a faint buzz, like a disconnect, and the thought, just the thought,  of another him sent shivers down his spine. He couldn't go to Gotham. He just couldn't. 

There was this forum hosted by some fanboy called Control Freak. Guy was a little more than obsessed, but it was still a veritable landmine of information, all things considered. Dude was probably a stalker. Whatever, details. The Titans were the Teen Titans. They lived in the giant T on the island across the city. Green kid was Beast Boy, girl in cloak was Raven. The cyborg was called Cyborg, points for originality. The girl in purple was Starfire, which made literally no sense, since that girl was clearly younger than him - in his world, Starfire was older. And Dick's girlfriend. Maybe the timelines weren't as parallel as he'd thought. 

As for Robin - there were two of them. Two Robins, one in Gotham, and one in Jump City. For a brief while Jason considered the possibility of Robin just jumping between cities, and Control Freak being an idiot, but no. This Robin was clearly older than the one in Gotham. To be honest, it was just plain confusing - he didn't recognise either of the outfits from the pictures, so who knew how many Robins there were. Had been. Mutilated world map included, there was still a lot he didn't know about this reality. Or how he was going to survive in it. It obviously had some connection to the All-Caste, but hell if he had any idea what it was. Or how to get to them. Was the door still in the Himalayas? How the hell would he get there? 

Information was still his best friend, so he went back to digging through Control Freak's forum. There were a lot of heroes he recognised, mostly sidekicks, but any kind of Justice League there might have been seemed to have come to a swift end three years prior. Most of the big time superheros inexplicably vanished around that time too. Batman was still hanging around, apparently, it would take nothing short of a nuclear bomb to get rid of Bruce, but Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Arrow, Manhunter… zip. Nada. It was a sidekick's world now. Jason wasn't sure how to feel about that.

He was briefly toying with the idea of coming back out into the open - he would need a name, something fitting and ironic, maybe Red Hood, for the man who killed him - when he stumbled onto a particular entry in the villain log.

Red X. One of Robin's aliases. Spot currently open. 

Jason's lips split into a grin. Oh, he knew how he was going to get places. He had a real good idea.


End file.
